The liquid pooling in the sunken eyes is mustard-seed yellow, almost ochre, but a color I’ve never mixed before. My hand shakes as I dip the brush, gather pigment from around brittle lashes, and spread it along the edge of a daffodil. The perfect color for where the shadow of a headstone falls across the buttery petal.

There are flowers now. It’s early spring in my little garden. But there aren’t enough blooms to fill a gallery.

I lower the head of Albert Vernon 1926–1999 into the pot at my feet. Scalp slides from bone and teeth tumble from leathery lips as his cheekbone comes to rest against the pottery.

“Show me a pretty story, Albert,” I whisper to him. The smell of him sticks to my tongue, stink turning to flavor, and it’s ochre, too. “Your wife was all wild morning glory and bluebells. I bet she covered you with roses.”

I pour dirt over him. Gather water from the condensation troughs and saturate the soil. I need more blossoms, and fast. I still haven’t finished a painting.

***

Natalie brings me a package. She walks right into the greenhouse. Doesn’t knock. I need a lock.

The package is wrapped in red paper, green ribbon tied around it. Already? I’m running out of time.

I don’t want to set my brush down, but I do it. Get it over with. If she argues, I’ll just be distracted longer.

“Merry early Christmas. I thought you could use this now. Didn’t want to make you wait.” She smiles. It’s a nice smile. It’s a shame I don’t do portraits.

Then her face wrinkles. “Ugh! It stinks in here.”

I scan the beds. Everything planted, nothing visible except the flowers. Little pops of color bobbing over buried secrets.

“I got a weird fungus. Can’t get the stink out.” I smile back, take the package, snap the ribbon, rip the paper. Inside the box, resting on a pillow of tissue, is a pair of wool fingerless gloves. The stitches are strained in places, loose in others.

“A lady at work showed me how to knit them. I thought they might help you paint outside in the winter.”

She’d sewn roughly-cut suede patches to the palms.

“And maybe your hands won’t get so beat up gardening.”

Her thoughts are all buttercups and forget-me-nots, morning glory vines twisting around my heart.

“Thank you,” I say. I’ve forgotten how to say anything else.

She smiles. Sunflowers—black-eyed Susans. Colors I haven’t seen for months. Hues that have gone dry in my paint box. Colors I need.

The composition of her thoughts is stretched across the canvas of her face, and it’s more than I can resist.

***